Accurate estimation of project parameters such as cost, schedule, or quality is an invaluable asset to a business. Estimating project parameters fairly accurately saves company's time, money, and enhances the company's goodwill and relationship with its customers. However, it is not an easy task to estimate an overall cost, schedule or quality of a project, especially a complex project involving multiple phases and components that depend on and/or interact with another.
A project life cycle is an ongoing process, in which subtasks complete and new information surfaces. Current approaches (e.g., COCOMO II, SLIM, SEER, Price-S) do not systematically update their estimates based on ongoing availability of information, nor do they actively reflect on the changes in variance that such updates provide. In sum, there is an inability to reflect on or consider the variance in the estimates and manage it effectively using new or updated information that becomes available as the project proceeds.